This is extraordinarily well done and begs to be shared widely.<p>Once blockchain tech is understood by the masses, the sky (moon?) is truly the limit. As this video demonstrates, it's not actually that complicated.<p>It could be made better (perhaps) by clearly establishing at the begining what problem the blockchain attempts to solve. Otherwise, this is a phenominal "blockchain for idiots" introduction that even your grandmother would understand. That's not easy.
Pretty cool. This is the first time I looked at the blockchain and his explanation was immediately understandable.<p>Having said that, he mentioned that everyone has a copy of the blockchain. So, is that really true? Wouldn't "everyone" be overwhelmed by the number of blocks?<p>Is there a specific example where blockchain is used, other than bitcoin?
Maybe this is off-topic, as Bitcoin is an implementation of a blockchain, but I'm interested in how the reward and consensus system works.<p>This video implies that, while expensive, it's not <i>that</i> expensive to calculate a correct nonce. Why, therefore, is mining now only viable to huge ASIC farms? My presumption is that it must be to do to with either speed (i.e., the farms get there first), or influence (i.e., the farms have more peers, so can sway the vote in their favour).
Nice job.<p>Nit - it would be nice not to use the term "signed" for a block that has a sufficiently small hash. The term "valid" is more commonly used for this attribute of a block, and less confusing with signed transactions.
I saw Anders give this overview live at a Hubweek presentation at the Boston Fed a few months back. Excellent overview. Not sure if he's still working at Circle, but their recent pivot away from Bitcoin is a bummer - but I'm told they're still utilizing the Blockchain as an underlying technology for their systems.
Wait what is the coinbase thing?<p>EDIT: Oh, that's when you successfully mine a block. I'm guessing they chose the name "Coinbase" instead of "reward" to promote Coinbase.
I'm more than sure I misunderstand something. Is the purpose of mining to introduce cost to recalculating a chain? So basically if someone changes a block in the chain mining makes it impractical to extend the change upstream? If so how did this impact the security of blockchains in the early days when mining complexity was very low and attainable on a single CPU.<p>By the way, amazing find. Immensely thankful to the OP for sharing.
I'd like to start a Reddit community around interactive explanations like this – wanna join? <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/explorables/" rel="nofollow">https://www.reddit.com/r/explorables/</a>
Great explanation. Thank you very much. However, it raises question for me:<p>- So "Hash" it combination of Block Number, Nonce, and the Data?
- If "mining" means computing the Nonce, what is the actual data to be hashed?
- For Coinbase case, is it the data is the miner's Coinbase Account? So that if mining successful, the miner will get the "money"? If so, how do the first miner advertise the result so that the other peer can trust that the first miner actually get the money?
At about 8:50 he describes how changes to early blocks cause the chain to "resist change". I understand how a change to a previous block will require re-computation of subsequent blocks, but how is this "resisting change"? Just recompute the nonce for each of the remaining 2 or 3 blocks. No big deal. What am I missing?
Why does the number have to be a nonce? If you can find a number that gives a block the correct number of zeros, but it has been previously used to give a totally different block the correct number of zeros, what is wrong with using it?
There is something i don't understand: At the point a transaction is made there is only one copy. Does that not mean at that point its vulnerable to fraud before more copies are made?
Very nice explanation. Not oversimplifying and not too detailed. Could anyone care to explain smart contracts in the same balanced fashion? I always struggle to convey my understanding.
Anders Brownworth is the cohost of the Asymco podcast along with Horace Dediu. He mostly takes the back seat to Horace in that podcast so I'm amazed to see how talented he is at explaining things. He did in a podcast that he is working on blockchain related startup (apart from being a helicopter pilot!)
This was posted before , but IMO is very well written:- <a href="https://www.igvita.com/2014/05/05/minimum-viable-block-chain/" rel="nofollow">https://www.igvita.com/2014/05/05/minimum-viable-block-chain...</a>
Very interesting and well explained. I like the style with the code/tabs. Link to that code: <a href="https://github.com/anders94/blockchain-demo" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/anders94/blockchain-demo</a>
I really like this demo; it makes sense and was stepped through beautifully.<p>I would love to see a 'weaknesses' explanations about blockchains though, like how 'truthiness' is generated and speed of verification and distribution.<p>Well done.
What's the guarantee that every peer has the same number of blocks? Are they asynchronously updated through a global endpoint or something similar?<p>And how do these peers communicate with each other?
One of his last comments -- the one about having an immutable, agreed upon history -- seems like a great tool for recording facts in our "alternate-facts" world.